Flat panel displays, as representatives of a larger class of controllable devices, are comprised of a multiplicity of picture elements (pixels) usually arranged in an X-Y matrix. Different pixel designs lend themselves to different approaches to control individual pixels, which are often further broken down into red, green, and blue sub-pixels for most current display technologies, e.g., liquid crystal displays. Active matrix addressing currently involves the use of active devices (transistors, and more specifically, thin film transistors) at each subpixel to electrically control the display's pixels. The best-known alternative, passive matrix addressing, avoids the need for transistors distributed across the display by exploiting pixel latency (persistence) in those flat panel designs that admit of such manipulation. Passive matrix displays, while less expensive, are known to be of lower quality, and are not considered suitable for high resolution and/or video display applications with their high frame rates. Active matrix displays, while exhibiting better performance, are far more complex, more expensive to build, and suffer from poor yields at larger display sizes due to the large quantity of semiconductors (often numbering more than 3 million) distributed over the surface area of the display.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a display addressing mechanism that combines the best features of active matrix and passive matrix addressing: high yields at larger display sizes, no active devices (transistors) on the display proper, high resolution capability, and high frame rates suitable for video imaging.